The Justice Department has issued a new legal opinion that could help reverse degree inflation—the growing trend of employers requiring college degrees for jobs that didn't previously need them. In a recent opinion to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Justice Department clarified civil rights law to place aptitude tests and other hiring measures on more equal legal footing with college degree requirements, according to Preston Cooper, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, writing on June 15, 2026. The opinion aims to address a backwards legal regime that has pushed employers to rely heavily on degrees while shying away from job-specific tests that might actually be better predictors of performance.
The data on degree inflation is stark. Just 9 percent of secretaries held a bachelor's degree in 1990, but that proportion has since risen to 35 percent. The nursing field has seen an even sharper shift: while 46 percent of registered nurses held a four-year degree in 1990, 75 percent of nurses have one today. These changes reflect a broader pattern across the economy, where jobs that once required only a high school diploma increasingly demand college credentials. Over 40 percent of job postings now specify a bachelor's degree requirement, even for jobs that have historically not required degrees or where a degree is clearly not necessary for the position. The racial disparities are significant: 43 percent of non-Hispanic white adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, compared to 30 percent of black adults.
The report explains that the Justice Department's new opinion doesn't overturn existing civil rights law, but rather changes how it should be interpreted. Going forward, regulators and courts should presume that "background checks, aptitude tests, knowledge-based tests, SAT scores, high-school graduation requirements, or blind auditions" are related to the job and hence legitimate, the opinion states. Cooper writes that challengers must now show that the hiring policy they're challenging actually causes the unequal outcomes in question, not simply that unequal outcomes exist. The opinion also requires those challenging a hiring practice to offer the employer a "viable alternative" that accomplishes the same hiring goals with a lesser disparate impact.
The core problem, according to the report, stems from how regulators have applied disparate-impact doctrine. Under this doctrine, employers generally can't rely on hiring tests or screening criteria that produce substantially different outcomes across demographic groups unless those criteria are "job related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity". Regulators have used this standard to block employment aptitude tests, written exams, and English proficiency tests—but curiously have given college degree requirements a pass, even though degrees clearly produce disparate outcomes. Employers, naturally wary of getting sued, lean on college degrees to assess job applicants as opposed to other tests which might be more relevant to the job and fairer to people without degrees. This has created a credentialing treadmill that forces students to spend more time and money to qualify for the same jobs, while closing off opportunities for workers without degrees and worsening labor shortages in skilled occupations.
The Justice Department opinion won't fix degree inflation overnight, Cooper acknowledges. Degree requirements in job postings are an entrenched way of doing things, so most employers won't immediately transform their hiring models. But the new guidance gives employers legal cover to shift away from degree requirements toward other measures of job fitness, potentially opening doors for the much larger pool of workers without degrees. The opinion will help edge the college degree off the pedestal on which misguided interpretations of civil rights law have inexplicably placed it—and create more opportunities for workers of all educational backgrounds.